Poll an Bliain Úire

The small doline entrance

Ascending the first pitch

Poll an Bliain Úire, or New Year’s Cave, is the latest find in County Cavan. It was discovered by Jock Read in the days leading up to New Year’s Eve 2013. Since then it has been pushed approximately 40m in vertical depth by Jock and the Shannon Group.

A beautiful pitch

The cave is interesting and features some awkwardly tight squeezes through muddy chutes at the entrance. It then develops vertically and contains a short and very fine pitch in immaculate limestone (pictured above). It has small amounts of pretty decoration including some unusual orange calcite ‘nodules’ which glisten somewhat in the beam of a helmet light.

Jock admiring the unusal orange calcite formations on the wall

It takes a reasonable flow of water and in the coming year it will be interesting to see if progress will be made and, if it pushed, where will it head? A dye trace and future digging will help determine it’s path.